As anyone familiar with even the basics of Irish history knows, it is rare for Northern Ireland's political parties to come to a consensus on anything. After all, the region's parliament has been suspended since February 2022 over disagreements on how to implement the Northern Ireland Protocol of the EU-UK post-Brexit trade deal.
But industry veteran Andrew Pyne, founder and chief executive of FlyAtlantic, had parties across the region's divide endorsing his plans to get low-cost long-haul flights, including to the US, taking off from Belfast International Airport by 2024.
"We were pleased to see them all backing us," he said.
Airport authorities have been very supportive, Pyne added, providing what he said was a "dedicated facility" for his new airline. But the next steps for FlyAtlantic include getting the aircraft and cash needed for lift-off.
"We're speaking to a number of lessors and we're confident there is availability," Pyne said. "And we're comfortable with the rates we're being quoted, but we do need investment", he added. "We have a MoU with one investor and I'm confident there'll be more good news in the first quarter of 2023."
A smallish island with a population of around 7 million people, Ireland already offers multiple trans-Atlantic flight options, with Dublin and Shannon airports both facilitating US immigration processing before passengers board.
They might be in two separate jurisdictions, but Dublin Airport is but a 90 minute drive from Belfast. So is there room for more, particularly as Belfast does not have a direct flight to the US?
"We're looking to draw in traffic to Belfast and Northern Ireland from the continent, from the rest of the UK, from the US," Pyne said, citing a model he said was used by WOW, a defunct Icelandic carrier he was involved in during its seven years of flying up to 2019.
The idea is that by offering a transit point between the US and Europe, as well as Britain, traffic can be drawn to Belfast by passengers who might want a stop-off between moving to these larger destinations.
"We think we can be more successful on a more sustainable basis," Pyne said, comparing FlyAtlantic to WOW, which operated out of a sparsely-populated island. 300,000 or so people is small even compared to Northern Ireland's 1.8 million.
The hope, Pyne said, is to fly to US destinations as far west as Chicago and as far south as Charlotte - and to link these cities via Belfast to large European counterparts that are "unserved or underserved in terms of transatlantic traffic".
"We're looking at 35 destinations and 18 aircraft by the end of 2028," he said, adding that he hopes to partner with short-haul specialists flying in and out Belfast, such as easyJet and Jet2.
"Our approach is to work with them, not against them," Pyne said.